We seek imperfection in things but not our selves
The recent kerfuffle over Hillary Rodham Clinton appearing without fully styled hair and makeup during an official visit to Bangladesh prompts many questions — the most obvious being why a female Secretary of State should have to bother with mascara as well as talking points when a male counterpart would have no such obligation. From a style perspective, however, another question comes to mind: Why is it that when it comes to the latest fashions for our homes and closets we seek out imperfection. But when it comes to our bodies, the only acceptable standard is perfect? Think about it. We pay more for designer jeans that are artfully distressed with rubbed-out knees and cute little holes than crisp ugly new ones. The latest must-have T-shirts are made of cotton spun to be as sheer and lightweight as the workout tee you’ve worn since college. And ever since the late, great designer Alexander McQueen introduced frayed edges on the cuffs of tailored jackets and Miuccia Prada took up the charge on shirt plackets and skirt hems, clothing designed to look unfinished has carried high-end cachet. This taste for imperfection has gained steam with the vogue for the handmade. Whether it’s a cultural reaction to a world that is increasingly high-tech, streamlined and digital, the objects we desire are those that reveal the hand of their human maker — which often means they’re irregular and one-of-a-kind rather than mass produced and perfect. Today, Minton china is passed over in favour of misshapen hand-glazed ceramic oddities that convey “character.” Granny’s walnut dining table looks old-fashioned next to a rough-hewn slab of barnboard refashioned as a trestle table. Brand-new painted dressers are fashionably sanded at the edges to reveal the wood beneath. Leather chairs and sofas arrive cracked and faded from the furniture store. Beat-up vintage hotel silver serving pieces, mismatched table linens and chairs only serve to complete the studied offhand look. At the same time, however, we denizens of these charmingly unruly homes are rigorously unforgiving when it comes to our own physical appearance. Despite most of our gruelling work schedules, working out three times a week is now required maintenance in order not to look as though you have “let things go.” Our bathroom shelves are bursting with antiaging creams, serums and potions, each promising to prevent or at least delay the development of any physical patina on our bodies — no matter how much we might love the look on our jeans or leather sofas. And thanks to all those hightech developments that fuel our style fascination with imperfection, we can now actually perfect our selves with lasers and fillers, chin and nose sculpting, and fat-sucking and injecting machines.
The weird result of this new capability to perfect ourselves is that everybody increasingly looks the same. (This was brought home to me the other evening while watching the terrifying spectacle of Donald Trump’s Miss USA pageant, televised from Las Vegas.)
Thanks to the ubiquity of fashion instruction of the What Not to Wear variety on TV, in tabloids and on the Internet, everybody is dressed in cheaper versions of what one might see in U.S. magazines worn by J. Lo or Kim Kardashian. Their bodies have been sucked and augmented and worked out to eradicate individuality in order to more accurately resemble the silhouettes of these pop idols, too. Ageless and without identifying marks or ethnic identifiers, they are like living Barbies.
I am old enough to remember watching beauty pageants as a girl, when the appeal of the politically incorrect pursuit was to pick your favourite and root for her throughout the contest. You would be charmed, say, by Miss Ohio’s dimples or the slightly pigeon-toed Miss Michigan. Now our standard of beauty is to be a clone. And the whole point of cloning, of course, is that the copy is perfect.
I have to say I’m with Hillary on this. The end result of all this striving for perfection is a world where objects are the only things with personality. Karen von Hahn is a Toronto-based writer, trend observer and style